Re: repeated failure to properly shutdown

[Robert Elz <kre%munnari.OZ.AU@localhost>]

    Date:        Fri, 22 Jul 2016 22:15:02 -0700
    From:        Michael Plass <mfpnb%plass-family.net@localhost>
    Message-ID:  <3C6B1155-00DF-420D-82DA-6227D62D7A7A%plass-family.net@localhost>


  | Hmm, it looks like doing "shutdown now" to get into single-user
  | will force-unmount the tmpfs file systems (/etc/rc.d/swap1),

Yes, but for Brad, that is what caused the panic that started all of
this discussion, so ...

  | so you could be left in a state where
  | creating a regular /dev/null becomes all too easy.

that possibility never arose.

  | As an aside, while testing out things I also noticed that MAKEDEV
  | tries to use $MKNOD in create_mfs_dev(), but this is only set if
  | the -m switch is supplied.

I'd need to analyse that a little more, but I am not sure it is
relevant.   Perhaps the MKNOD there should be TOOL_MKNOD ?

  | So the attempt to make a temporary console fails.

If the mknod of temp_console fails, the result would be that output
from MAKEDEV would be sent to a unlinked file ("temp_console") rather
than to the actual system console device, which is clearly the intent.
While that's not good, if it happens, nor is it a reason for anything else
to fail, and nor does it explain how /dev/null would get to be a file.

kre